


Billo Rani

by fireshowers (julychildren)



Category: Kari - Amruta Patil
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:39:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julychildren/pseuds/fireshowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of Billo, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Billo Rani

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dhobi ki Kutti (dhobikikutti)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhobikikutti/gifts).



She is the spider. Spreading out long tentacles of arm leg perfume dark hair-ropes swaying folds of skirt she waits, not particularly for anything or anyone, but everything and everyone will eventually come stumbling into her web.

It is important to learn to spin the web. Once you have mastered that craft, there's little else to be done. Wait. Watch them come. Take your pick. The giggly chick from college for your weekend shopping trips but for the study nights before exams the nerd. The promotion from your boss but not his awkward, semi-apologetic invitation for a Friday evening in. The afternoon tea with your landlord that left him ecstatic; even though the tea was weak and bitter, there were crusted splotches of ketchup on his somewhat expensive sofa cover, and you didn't even bother to reach for the biscuit tin that silently screamed out its presence on the top of the dining table.

They never protest. Never breathe a word of offence in _her_ presence; although they may go back home, shielded from the web behind their protective walls, and mutter to their inner selves, _Who does she think she is, the snotty bitch_. She thinks she is the spider. She knows each time they believe they’ve broken free of the web, they haven’t; that whenever she tugs again at the strand that links them to her, they will come spinning back. And they do.

She is the spider, and does what the spider must. The spider doesn’t ask for permission. The spider is not meant to apologize. The spider leaves no thank-you note. 

\--

The evening the odd new girl came home with a bunch of orchids and stuffed them in an emptied Coca Cola bottle on the dining table, Billo Rani instantly knew why they were there. For flowers there’s never any just-like-that. And so she smirked and called out to her older housemate, ‘Hey Del, fancy some ice cream? Faiz brought me a tub of coffee and almond fudge in the afternoon. I’ve had some. Left the rest in the freezer.’

' _Curry_ , want some?’

The new girl shifted awkwardly on her large spreading feet (dutifully washed and dried after coming in from outdoors, and slipped into cheap railway-station hawaii chappals). The new girl gazed with fierce interest at her knobby knees (not that they weren’t objects of wonder of their own accord). The new girl mumbled something in the direction of the floor that neither of them could catch a word of.

‘Gotta speak up, kid! Time and ice cream wait for no one.’ Another dripping spoonful disappeared rapidly into Delna’s mouth, indicating the truth in her philosophical observation.

‘ _I’m allergic to almonds_.’

The girl blurted out the words, enunciating them in the same whiny tone but louder, and darted back into her room. Twirling the bottle of Coke with its wilting orchids, it made Billo Rani break out in giggles.

 

It wasn’t cruelty. Not exactly cruelty. Later when she was alone and in the mood, Billo would let the new girl come into her room and sit down at the corner of her bed, regaling her with hilarious anecdotes from college. Kari never actively pitched in at these sessions with stories of her own, barely managing to pass a stiff chuckle at her cues, but Billo could understand. It wasn’t a surprise that this strange little boy-girl thing had never had much in the way of a life. True, she had graduated from her small-town college with higher marks than some of the brightest boys Billo courted; that she continued to buy and read large incomprehensible books even when she no longer needed to; that she spoke in obscure puns and allusions and inhabited a space that seemed all inside her head… but in the real world she could barely walk the distance to the bathroom without stumbling and smashing her big toe.

It was probably part of the girl’s weirdness that she scowled furiously each time and sucked it up, never came crying down her or Delna. Billo hated crybabies. Attention-whores set her head on fire. She wished she could scratch the eyes out of the girls she met at office and nightclubs, who gazed with unabashed admiration at her clothes and accessories and makeup only to go to shopping afterwards and buy the same things.

But this Kari she liked. There was a different texture to her worship. The inability to look Billo in the eye; the embarrassed turning away when she bore down upon her with a wide grin intended to dazzle; the hastily suppressed blush when she praised her courage or cleverness – they filled Billo with fond memories of the topper in high school who used to be ecstatic at the opportunity of spending his afternoons doing her homework. Billo Rani hadn’t been _cruel_ to that boy. In fact she had occasioned some of the happiest hours in his socially incapable teenage life – sitting with their heads together in the classroom at lunchtime, the beaming bespectacled crusader in assistance of the most desirable girl in the school. Of course, it would never do to turn up at the school prom on the arm of that boy; but of course he would never ask. As long as he did not attempt to step outside that tacit clause of entitlement, no one could accuse Billo of having been ungenerous with her friendship, her smiles or the mere resplendence of her presence in the life of that (dignified but) miserable chap.

It was the same generosity in her that this odd new girl, this Kari, managed to invoke. She seemed friendless and confused: a bundle of needs. If she actually expected Billo to take care of any of those needs, she would’ve been immediately revolted. But the fact that Kari didn’t ask for anything made her cute; made Billo Rani want to pet and cuddle and protect and save her, if only as a diversion when she was bored.

 

\---

Billo sniffs out the change in the air the moment she unlatches the front door late one night in autumn. A different perfume, cloying and perverse, ricocheting invisibly off the walls of the living room of Crystal Palace – filling the entire place with reverberations of the lithe stranger who is stretched lightly alongside Kari on the settee, both apparently absorbed in some artsy European flick that drones on unintelligibly on the TV. Neither of them had noticed when Billo entered the apartment.

For five hours Billo has been drinking and dancing with Zap, coming back home teetering with a headache slowly blooming inside her skull; but in that second she is alert. Untangling the fumbling boy from her waist, she sends him off to the bedroom. She runs her fingers through her hair, smoothes the dress, draws forth her most effective smile, and switches off the TV with the remote control to announce her presence.

The two of them turn together. Kari flinches. Kari pulls herself up on the settee and puts her feet down. Kari tries unsuccessfully to chuckle and begins to introduce the two of them in hastily strung words while the other one – the sheep-skinned predator – takes in Billo Rani with a calm, observant gaze. ‘My best friend Ruth’ acknowledges her with a barely perceptible nod, never once breaking the eye contact; doesn’t even bother to properly smile. _Who does she think she is, the snotty bitch?_

‘I hope your best friend finds our apartment agreeable, Kari,’ she says with a sneer once the girl is done with her blabbering. She hasn’t really listened through all of that talk. Doesn’t take clumsy words of introduction to understand that the stupid girl is utterly besotted with this brutal, magnetic newcomer.

‘Too many spiders in this apartment,’ the woman speaks for the first time, still looking at her but addressing Kari, enunciating her words quietly but clearly, ‘I’ll loan you a can of pesticide.’ She reaches a hand, purposefully ruffles the stupid girl’s hair. ‘And I’m sure your own broom will suffice.’ 

Billo feels an uncontrollable urge to clasp the hand and twist it right out of that thin willowy wrist. 

‘Those who live here learn to be reverent of spiders. They keep out the wasps.’ 

‘Cobwebs have a tendency of obscuring the sight.’ The beautiful monster gives her a knife-thin smile, ‘What if someone prefers wasps?’ 

‘Then she’d be a fool!’ 

Billo shoots a stern glance at Kari and recognizes immediately the battle she’s been losing… for how long? ‘Best friend Ruth’ could not have been one day’s work. Must’ve taken days to build up that long, unwavering gaze of adoration with which the girl smothered her captor; must’ve taken rapturous fulfilment of those unexpressed needs that Billo herself had never found worth consideration – but god, what a stupid, stupid, _stupid_ girl! At that price? Billo Rani wants to take the kid aside and give her a good shaking, maybe a tight slap or two; remind her that wasps are a fascinating game till in the end, they swerve around and plug you with venom. So much better to continue life in the familiar web, dangling dreamily up and down while the spider sucks you dry gently, almost imperceptibly, never wrecking the whole of your existence at once with a brutal sting.

But Kari gives her a look of timid reproach and it’s too late, Billo knows. The stupid girl has become addicted to the thrill of the sting. She looks helplessly from one of them to the other and implores her new best friend instead, ‘Hey, Ruth, why don’t we go out for a walk? I love the streets at night in this time of the year. We can pick up something to eat at the all-night _dhaba_ round the corner.’ 

The wasp tears her eyes away from Billo and touches Kari’s arm in an unnaturally convincing gesture of tenderness, ‘Sure we can sweetie, if that’s what you’d like.’ For a moment they are so immersed in each other’s eyes that Billo may as well have ceased to exist in the room. Then the wasp turns and holds her in a brief sharp gaze, adding, ‘And then you can come over and spend the night at my place.’ 

After they are gone Billo Rani sprays the entire apartment obsessively with room freshener, ignoring the half-asleep protests of a heavily hungover Zap. She smokes a cigarette, takes a shower, smokes another cigarette in the shower; sits for a long time on the pot holding in the last drag of the smoke, unable to breathe out. Tomorrow morning she will begin to spin a fresh web but tonight she must hang on to this old one, still reeling from the rupture as if it was a physical wound. She hopes she survives the stench. 

\---


End file.
